How to Image Classmate Without Recovery Partition

[EHaskins]

The imageing disk creates a 5.5gb recovery partition which cannot be used to recover the classmate, and is not used after imaging. Since the Classmate only has a 16gb SSD, it is unreasonable to waste that much space on the SSD.

I have modified the imaging scripts such that they do not create this partition.

NOTE: the following only has a "Works on my Machine" garuentee. Make a copy of the imaging flash drive before proceeding.

Replace the AUTOINSTALL.bat and DISKPARTSCRIPT.txt files on your imaging flash drive with the ones contained in the zip file attached to this post.

That is all. Boot your classmate from the flash drive and image as normal, but now you will now have the full 16gb of hdd space available.


Unfortunatly, due to the way they created the partitions the built-in utilites in winodws cannot remove this partition after imaging. It is possible to do remove this partition manually with third party tools after imaging is complete, but I dont' have time to document that procedure now.

[BrandonD-1528]

It would be recommended to try and remove the partition with a linux netboot or USB boot manually, and expanding the Windows partition, before attempting this method, as modifying the image key is risky.

Edit: Going to duplicate the imaging key on another flash drive and patch it. We have 2 netbooks so testing is an option. I'll report back in a bit.

[kinganu123]

Tested and confirmed working on our '10 netbook

[PatrickS]

You can boot to a linux live CD and manually remove the recovery partition. You can use tools such as Gparted or fdisk.

[EHaskins]

I've tested it, and I've now install all of the manditory updates and Java updates, and everything worked great.

Originally Posted by BrandonD-1528

Edit: Going to duplicate the imaging key on another flash drive and patch it. We have 2 netbooks so testing is an option. I'll report back in a bit.

Originally Posted by kinganu123

Tested and confirmed working on our '10 netbook

Thanks for the feedback.

Originally Posted by BrandonD-1528

It would be recommended to try and remove the partition with a linux netboot or USB boot manually, and expanding the Windows partition, before attempting this method, as modifying the image key is risky.

Originally Posted by PatrickS

You can boot to a linux live CD and manually remove the recovery partition. You can use tools such as Gparted or fdisk.

Yes, that is possible, but I believe this is the simpler method if the classmate has not yet been customized. If significant effort has already been expended, then yes, using GParted or a similar tool may be the correct course of action.

[BrandonD-1528]

This fix is confirmed working by us as well. Removing Open Office will also give some valuable space.

We went from just over 1 GB available to nearly 8.

[EHaskins]

Originally Posted by BrandonD-1528

This fix is confirmed working by us as well. Removing Open Office will also give some valuable space.

We went from just over 1 GB available to nearly 8.

Thanks for the feedback.

[BrandonD-1528]

Here's a bit of an update: This disk space recovery method is now featured in the KOP Control System section at http://www.usfirst.org/frc/kitofparts as of January 11, 2011.

[EHaskins]

Originally Posted by BrandonD-1528

Here's a bit of an update: This disk space recovery method is now featured in the KOP Control System section at http://www.usfirst.org/frc/kitofparts as of January 11, 2011.

Thanks for the info.

Eric

[jason701802]

Tested and confirmed by Team 753. We first tried using gParted, but it gave us an error and we were no longer able to boot. We decided to give this a go, backed up the .bat and .txt files, and re-imaged using these files. We are up and running with lots more space, many thanks.

[kinganu123]

Originally Posted by jason701802

Tested and confirmed by Team 753. We first tried using gParted, but it gave us an error and we were no longer able to boot. We decided to give this a go, backed up the .bat and .txt files, and re-imaged using these files. We are up and running with lots more space, many thanks.

I too tried gParted, and I got the recovery partition to be removed. HOWEVER, I couldn't extend the NTFS partition into the newly unallocated space, rendering this method useless.